Professor Roberts doubted that human beings hunted many mammoths. Unless very old or ill, a mammoth was big and dangerous. People would have scavenged mammoths and mainly hunted smaller animals. She has spent time visiting modern hunters and gatherers.
Regular readers know that this is as relevant to Poul Anderson's works as any new information about exo-planets and SETI. It is also too late for me to be on the computer so good night.
(Addendum: For a correction, see the combox.)
22 comments:
Hunter-gatherers hunt big dangerous animals all the time -- the Pygmies in the Ituri hunt elephants, for instance.
Gradual immigration will not produce a 90% genetic turnover. There has to be something that -removes- the previous population, or you get a much more partial replacement -- eg., in England the Anglo-Saxon invasion resulted in a 35-40% replacement.
90%+ is replacement level; it's about what you'd get from an ancient DNA analysis of southern New England in the years 1600-1700.
I'd guess at the same cause: a combination of disease, killing and expulsion.
Incidentally, the "Beaker phenomenon" in Britain, around 2500 BCE, -also- involved a more than 90% genetic turnover.
And it's definite that that took place over no more than a few centuries, possibly as little as one.
That wasn't just England; it was the whole of Britain, from the Channel to the Irish Sea and from Land's End to Caithness. Ireland too.
Kaor, Paul!
And Stirling beat me to saying I did not in the least believe that 90 percent plus genetic turnover was peaceful! Rather, invaders exterminated the former population.
I am puzzled at why so many scholars are reluctant to accept that human beings thousands of years ago could be as ruthless and cruel as we see them all too often being right now. Some STILL seem to wistfully think that long ago mankind lived in some kind of peaceful, pastoral Golden Age Eden. Therefore, I disagree with Alice Roberts.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I am puzzled as to why you are puzzled at disagreements. They happen all the time and the world would be a very different place without them. Alice Roberts acknowledged extermination as a possible explanation. She was not reluctant to accept any conclusion and was not wistfully thinking about a Golden Age. She was looking forward to new evidence making it clearer what happened. (New evidence can be surprising.)
But I must correct my own summary of her talk. She referred both to the neolithic revolution and to the "Beaker phenomenon." On reflection, I am now certain that her figure of 90% referred to the latter, not the former. I got them mixed up. And she thought that the Beaker phenomenon took place over three centuries.
Paul.
I think she also said that DNA analysis of human remains from the mammoth period shows that they were mainly eating smaller animals.
Kaor, Paul!
I really did know disagreements happens all the time, for all kinds of reasons. But I think some ideas are so patently absurd that I can't help but be surprised at how very intelligent people can believe in them. One of those absurdities being the myth of the Noble Savage, a bit of nonsense which goes back to Jacques Rousseau. Not that long ago I recall a vogue among some writers praising noble primitives who allegedly lived in peaceful harmony with each other and Mother Earth before wicked, vile, civilized WHITE people came along!
Good, Alice Roberts at least acknowledges the possibility of violent extermination. Which I think is much stronger than a mere possibility. And I recall how, in FOSSIL MEN, Kermit Pattison wrote of how the archaeological team led by Dr. Timothy White discovered evidence of how early humans/hominins were killing and EATING each other millions of years ago. Not exactly a dreamy, peaceful Arcadia!
Did hunter/gatherers eat small animals? Of course! I also think many of them also hunted big game, including really big animals like mammoths and the American bison.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I think the essential point is that we just need to keep learning more. 90% genetic change: fact (only very recently discovered). The change resulting only or mainly from violence? As yet, only a hypothesis even if the most likely. No direct evidence yet. The main thing is to keep gathering new evidence, not to insist on or argue about hypotheses.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Of course I agree with the idea of searching for more evidence. No argument there. I do think some hypotheses are at least more likely to be true than others.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Of course everyone has an opinion about the most probable explanation. The first thing I said about Alice Roberts on this matter in the above post was that she claimed it was not yet known whether violent invasion or gradual immigration caused the shift so we could have avoided this detour through Rousseau etc!
I am now thinking both that violence is an all too probable explanation of the shift and also that things usually turn out to be more complicated than we expect.
Paul.
One thing that ancient DNA research has brought out is that the mechanisms of historical causation do not change because there aren't any literate observers.
For example, there's another genetic episode in Iberia in the 2500 BCE range, where all the -male- lines of descent change -- the female DNA continues to be largely descended from the original Neolithic migration from Anatolia, but the male Y-chromosome lines suddenly and abruptly become Central-North European, by about 2000 BCE.
Ultimately Yamnaya, from the Pontic steppes, via the Corded Ware.
Now, what could have caused this?
Well, I'd rule out a scenario where all the local males are so demoralized by the tall cool blondness of a bunch of immigrants that they castrate themselves with flint knives and so don't leave any descendants...
Just as I doubt the Neolithic aborigines of Britain at about the same time responded to the demoralizing sight of the Bell Beaker's superior ceramics by losing all sex drive and becoming celibate.
The cases of 90% replacement that are recent enough for historical records, involved disease as a *major* factor. I don't think the Europeans that moved into Africa were less violent than those that moved into the Americas & Australia, they just didn't have the disease factor working to remove the opposition.
IIRC there is some evidence for disease helping the Yamnaya to replace older Europeans.
Kaor, Paul and Jim!
Paul: I did see that bit you mentioned about Alice Roberts, but the "impression" I got was that it was a reluctant concession on her part. And that made me think of Jacques Rousseau's nonsense and the starry eyed types romanticizing saintly (sic) primitives.
Violent extermination of older populations in Britain or Iberia by warlike invaders (perhaps aided by novel diseases) is far more plausible than something as fantastic as 90% plus of the older population somehow peacefully dying off!
Jim: But, if anything, Europeans who moved to Africa from the 18th to 20th centuries ware at a disadvantage in some ways. The "disease climate" was much more unfavorable to them than to the Africans. Africa was never as heavily colonized as Australia was (and Oz had only a small native population). The real advantages Europeans had in Africa were technological and military.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean:
Exactly. Disease drastically cut the previous populations living in the Americas & Australia when Europeans arrived, but drastically cut down Europeans moving into most of Africa. So the military advantage Europeans had over Africans was not enough to allow Europeans to replace the population in Africa, but where disease & military advantage combined the Europeans did mostly replace the pre-existing population.
Kaor, Jim!
I basically agree with your estimate of the European experience in Africa. I would add, however, that in the 19th century there was DISAPPROVAL, for the most part, of any deliberate exterminating of the native populations. And it was European rulers who stamped out slavery in Africa.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: official disapproval, in most cases, though there were exceptions. The "extermination order" officially issued during the German suppression of the Herero revolt in German SW Africa (Namibia) just after 1900, for instance. Though that proved controversial in Germany.
Note that in South Africa the climate was quite healthy; British troops stationed there in the 19th century usually had a lower death-rate than those in barracks in England.
The European settlers faced a population in the Western Cape that was as vulnerable to Eurasian diseases as in the Americas. 90% of them died in an epidemic (probably smallpox) in the early 18th century.
The net result in that part of the country was rather like central Mexico -- some "white" people (actually about 10% Asian/African by the 19th century) and a large "mixed" population that became culturally European -- speaking a Dutch dialect (ancestral to Afrikaans) and becoming Christians.
Things were different in the rest of the country, where the Bantu-speakers were as resistant to European diseases as Europeans were.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I did have Leopold II of Belgium's Congo Free State as an exception to that disapproval of being genocidal. Good, that not every body in Germany shrugged off brutality by Germans in Africa.
I agree I should have mentioned that South Africa was not anywhere as miserable a place for Europeans as most of the rest of Africa.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: "HIgh Africa" -- the belt running from the Cape to Ethiopia -- had lots of healthy areas; on the Equator, anywhere above about 4500 ft.
The problem from a European point of view was that they were all fairly distant from the coast; you couldn't get to them from the coast without crossing "fever belts" riddled with malaria and sleeping-sickness.
The approach from the south is different; the Cape and the Karoo are quite healthy, and while the coast of Natal is not quite as safe, it's not really very bad until you get up to the area around the Mozambique border.
That's why the Afrikaners were able to expand into the interior, over the Orange River; they had direct access to the High Veld from the south, and secondarily from the east.
If the British hadn't stopped them, the Boers might well have pushed up into the highlands of the interior.
Overland treks from South Africa reached as far as Katanga and the central highlands of Angola, and there was nothing geographical/epidemiological to stop them reaching Kenya or even Ethiopia.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I had not known Africa had such large areas of territory Europeans would like! I think what you said about what the Boers might have done is what you had the Draka doing in your Domination books.
Also, I think Chaka, the mightiest of the Zulu kings, exterminated so many of the other tribes in southern Africa that he unwittingly left the way open for that kind of Boer expansion.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean:
What you said about the Zulu wars reminds me of what happened in the parts of eastern N. America due to the wars between he Iroquois federation & surrounding tribes. One result was that Southern Ontario was largely depopulated, so after US independence people who preferred living under British rule could easily move into that area without having to displace existing residents. Some of those people who moved there were Iroquois who had fought for the British side in the US rebellion.
Kaor, Jim!
I think I had some idea of how warlike the Iroquois were, but not of how they virtually exterminated their rivals and neighbors. I did know many thousands of Loyalists left the new US to settle in Canada after the war of Independence.
Ad astra! Sean
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